knots in this noose of mine
by Mira-Jade
Summary: Oh, how easy it would be for him to turn puppet strings to knotted noose and watch her swing. 50 Sentences. Molly/Moriarty


**"knots in this noose of mine"**

**Genre**: Drama, Humor  
**Rating**: T  
**Time Frame**: Pre-series, to post-series  
**Characters**: Molly/Moriarty

**Summary**: Oh, how easy it would be to turn her puppet strings to knotted noose and watch her swing . . .

**Notes**: This year I am playing around with the 50 sentence challenge over at another site, which prompts one to write four stories a month based on a set of fifty prompts. The fifty prompts each result in one sentence each, and then a whole story is formed from the snapshots provided in those sentences. Obviously, this challenge will slaughter grammar, and bring out the seldom seen fandom from the muse - but is a fun and curious thing that has already been incredibly interesting. If you wish to, you can track my progress in my profile. :)

And for all of these M's, what better to play around with the beautiful twistedness that is Molly and Moriarty? :) This is the latest in my M&M plot arc - which also includes "he kindly stopped for me", "victor, meet spoilts", and "glass shatters softly."

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

* * *

_01. Measure_

Molly will be asked this many times; asked why she let herself warp and fold to a presence such as his - and while she could say many things in answer, the one explanation she will always come back to is that she had beholden herself in that time before him . . . and she had found herself wanting.

_02. Midnight_

She no longer fears the dark, knowing now what resides in the shadows; knowing the make and the matter of the darkest things that dreary old London could offer, and that knowing did wonders to quench anything resembling fear within her.

_03. Mild_

In the same breath Molly coughs up strength from her newly birthed lungs, and refuses to let the detective in to see the body of Kay Osborne without the proper paperwork filled out – right before flat out saying _no_ when he asked her for cream and sugar for the coffee she had given him black.

_04. Message_

When, a second later, John also refused to mix in the detective's cream and sugar for him, she felt a sense of victory flood her veins at the put out look on Sherlock's face.

_05. Mock_

"Come now, Molly, the game is afoot!" Moriarty urged her in a surprisingly good imitation of Sherlock's voice as he pulled her away from her work.

_06. Mischief_

She looks at the morning paper only to see that Jim had been there first, loud and obnoxious red _M's_ crossed proudly over the deaths he claimed as his own in the obituaries.

_07. Murder_

If he was trying to shock her, he would have to do better than that, she thought as she turned to the funnies section.

_08. Mull_

"Curiosity," he answers when asked; hands careful and experimental on her skin, and the surprise in his voice matched the surprise in her own mind; after all, she had never been anything worthwhile before, but she knew that corruption had a purple and bruises sort of a shade that could be beautiful when properly beholden.

_09. Minion _

Jim texts her and asks(tells) her to pick up milk while at the market, and when she asked him why he was using one of his henchman's phones, he absently replied that his own was too far away, and he was busy plotting.

_10. Malevolence_

It was very hard, at times, for her to equate the criminal mastermind with the man flopped lazily on her bed – suit jacket discarded and vest unbuttoned – and most seriously reenacting the third act of _Julius Caesar_ between her stuffed animals.

_11. Melancholy_

The death of the elder Professor Moriarty sends Jim into a lethal sort of silence that doesn't break for the whole of three days, and she was left to wonder about the shadowy and infamous man who had taught his son everything he knew.

_12. Moniker_

"Moriarty," she tries the name out on suddenly trembling lips, the way that his eyes darkened at the fear in her tone not lost completely on her – that sixth sense that all prey held within her warbled dangerously as she whispered, "you're the one they are looking for."

_13. Maintain_

"And what does that change?" he purred the question to her, voice high and lilting and just slightly _mad_ around the edges of his syllables as his fingers played gently with the delicate skin of her neck.

_14. Muse_

"Just sit there – right there; don't _move_, don't _talk_, and don't _breathe_ too loudly . . . I just need you there so I can think."

_15. Malady_

"Should I ask?" Molly questioned upon watching Jim coldly throw dart after dart at a clumsily fingerprinted (and uncannily accurate) resemblance of Sherlock on the wall, his aim never faltering even though he never bothered to look up from the blueprints spread out before him.

_16. Mettle_

He smiles at her with a secret smile that she'd like to poke and prod and cut from his face in order to dissect the whole of it's meaning; over his chest she carves a perfect Y with a single fingertip, tracing out just where she would sink her scalpel if he were cold upon her table.

_17. Mortuary_

On her first day back to work after the explosion, she opened the freezer to find a woman, small of stature, and gently smiling in death, with a shade of coffee brown eyes that were just like her own, reflected.

_18. Malice_

The corpse's resemblance to herself was uncanny; and her head spun with the low cadence of the silent warning(threat) as her shaking fingers pushed the body away from her with a gasp(whisper of a scream).

_19. Mess_

"It need never come to that," says Jim's text to her in the next ten seconds; and she can hear the purr in his voice, imagine the press of his warm skin as he made her understand in the only way he knew how . . . this game was one that could go on until she forced him to end it, but if she forced his hand – breathed a word - end it he would.

_20. Mediocrity_

It was a simple moment between them, her holding his cup of tea in her hands as he puzzled over his work before him, her eyes fondly tracing the lines and form of him until he looked up at her with dark as sin eyes, "you'll burn a hole in me," he muttered, drawing a blush from her at being caught.

_21. Mimicry_

He holds one of her arms painfully behind her back, his eyes flashing dangerously at the men of the law – every bit of them was the dragon and the damsel, and helpless 'hostage' that she was couldn't help but smile when his knife lodged itself in the officer's throat rather than her own.

_22. Majesty_

He spills all of his secrets to her (or, so at the time she thought) as he casually cut an apple with his knife - the juices stained his rich suit dark and sweet, and when he offered her a peace with dangerous eyes she took the fruit from him, reminding herself that she was no Eve, and neither were these the staining seeds of a pomegranate – eating would not chain her to him.

_23. Mecca_

He never asked her to stay and never told her to leave, and while she liked to think she was no moon in thrall to his gravity, she still found herself enthralled as a pilgrim before a shrine with him, completely unable to turn away after so long a journey.

_24. Moral_

"I play the game for the game's own sake," he responds, eyes dark and thoughtful as he answered her question in the only way he could.

_25. Morale_

Should-of's, and ought-to-have-been's are as wispy a concept as rights and wrongs, and so she simply places them down into the depths of her mind – the bright places she didn't need now; unwilling to hold on to the poison of them as they rotted the new of her.

_26. Misfortune_

The dress is the richest fabric she has ever worn, and the depth of blue made her feel a black to match the night approaching as she dressed to play the part in their latest game of tumbling cards and chess pieces all askew and falling.

_27. Medusa_

"You need it more than I do, darling," Irene said as she dropped the pendant carved with the dread woman into her hands; her singer's voice warm with smoke and yet still luminously dangerous to her ears.

_28. Middleman_

Her bed was only a simple twin sized mattress, which suited her perfectly seeing as how she slept as still and as straight as the dead, and she always slept alone – but she enjoys trying to share it with him; limbs messily entwined and his breath against her temple as she blinked drowsily against his chest.

_29. Manifestation_

Her nightmares had always been ghoulish creatures with fangs and eyes of flame; a gentle man in tasteful suits with a devil playing in the black depths of his eyes was not something she'd pay the same homage as a childhood villain – and she things that a part of him respects her for that.

_30. Monitor_

"So, you have a date tonight, Miss Hooper?" Sherlock asked from the other side of the lab, his tone curious as she pocketed her phone with narrowed eyes.

_31. Martyr_

The part of martyr was not hers to play; she was no twisted and broken doll on the altar of his madness, she was simply _more_ now, something strong and forged in iron that they couldn't possibly understand.

_32. Mastermind_

They take a weekend trip to Paris on 'business' (but she is able to talk him into sightseeing on principle); and once in the Devon wing of the Louvre, she can't help but giggle at the sight of Jim carefully studying the depictions of Napolèon Bonaparte's various conquests.

_33. Might_

"Nothing," she answers when asked, "there's just a terrible resemblance between the two of you, that's all," she finished with a giggle – pointing to where Napolèon arrogantly took the crown from the Pope to dub himself Emperor of a New Rome.

_34. Mollify_

Later that day, she buys him a very familiar sweeping hat at Les Invalides, and while he mutters about antique accessories matching little with pristine designer suits, he still wears the hat for her on their return trip to London.

_35. Meant_

"Killing him would be about just as much fun as killing you – trust me, this game has a meaning, my dear, and when he figures that out, only then will the game end -for what use is playing when one's whole heart isn't invested?"

_36. Margin_

She finds that he has marked up the margins of her mystery novels – pointing out bad forensics and inane plotting, and writing his own ideas on sticky notes; still, he didn't have to write the mystery culprit's name in large red letters on the twelfth page in, completely ruining the novel for her.

_37. Minx_

"It is no one you need worry your pretty head over," he purred dangerously, taking the file of a woman named Irene Adler from her with a pointed look in his eyes.

_38. Memento_

She finds M&Ms left at her desk, and she rolled her eyes fondly at the silent joke before popping a few of the candies in her mouth.

_39. Miasma_

_Come to my web, says the spider to the fly_; for the longer she breathed the whole of him in, the harder she found it to break away from the spidersilk he has weaved around her.

_40. Mania_

She was a doctor in a different field than her wonderings took her, but a part of her ran up the curious symptoms before her with a detached air – the almost bipolar tendencies, and obsessive qualities; the lack of right and wrong, and the amazingly twisted intelligence that even Sherlock Holmes would envy . . .

_41. Medley_

She has never really been one for the higher forms of arts – ballets and plays were well and good, but they were right depressing when attending alone, and her cat didn't seem to mind her singing along at Glee as loud as she could – but, she has to admit she likes dressing up to go with Jim to see _Rigoletto_ at the Royal Opera House, amused as she was that he liked to mumble the Italian libretto under his breath in much the same way as she sang along to her own . . .

_42. Malt_

"I have never cared for a man who drinks as a way to shut a woman up," she mumbled darkly as he poured the shot of whiskey – and passed it to her, much to her mortification, his tone dangerously scathing as he hissed that she would need it before the night was through.

_43. Manila_

Detective Lestrade pushed a manila envelope to her, the pictures spilling out gruesome tales to any eye that saw; and yet, she merely held her head defiantly high and informed him that she worked with the dead - pictures could do nothing to shake her.

_44. Missing _

Molly did not see him for one month, two; and when the wind scratched against her window she searched the ink lines of the branches outside for a phantom face in the night, convincing herself that the sinking feeling inside of her was relief . . . even though it wasn't, not nearly.

_45. Motive_

She sits at her vanity mirror; wondering if there was something off about her – off for her seeing strength in the bruises that decorated her wrists and dotted her neck; seeing the marks of a woman who had lived where so many had been disposed of before.

_46. Meaning_

"I have my proof here," she mumbled sleepily, her thin fingers tracing over the lazy drumbeat of his heart under his skin; her touch as gentle as if she were touching one of her corpses, all silent and still.

_47. Machination_

He still tries sometimes, just to see if she is paying attention; and at a stray memory of Sherlock's ranting in the lab, she pushed her poisoned glass to Moriarty, and said with a frown, "You first."

_48. Mine_

"At first, Sherlock, it was all means and ends – and oh, what a pretty face I thought you would make when you found her name and mine written in her blood on the wall; her corpse would have laughed at you as you finally put two and two together – after all, you would have killed her with your inattention as surely as I rotted her with mine."

_49. Minacious_

"But that was at first . . ."

_50. Masterpiece_

He leaves the scene unscathed, his thoughts cocooning around the mouse faced little girl who now shone with lion eyes in his wake . . . he could turn her puppet strings like a noose if he wished and send her swinging; she knows this as well, and perhaps it was that subsequent lack of caring on her part that moves him to continue to throw paint at the blank canvas of her until a masterpiece shone from his efforts.


End file.
